Your Travel City Guide

The Caribbean often evokes images of exotic food, fabulous palm-fringed beaches, and vibrant music. As a general picture, this summary isn’t unfair – but the Caribbean is a big place, even if many of the islands are small. But if you need to make a choice for your Caribbean cruise, for truly exotic vistas, you simply can’t do better than the Southern Caribbean. These islands have rainforests and dramatic volcanoes as well as stunning beaches. Whether you choose to visit with a smaller operator like Star Clipper or Oceania, or go with the super-vessels run by giants like Royal Caribbean and Carnival, these islands will beguile you with their beauty and their culture at first sight.

Largely because of its distance from the US, the Southern Caribbean has traditionally been less visited than its Western and Eastern counterparts. But this is definitely beginning to change – people are starting to catch on to the magnificent beaches on islands like Aruba and Antigua, the jaw-dropping landscapes of islands like Guadeloupe, St Lucia and Martinique, and the spectacular snorkelling and scuba diving off islands like Curacao. Relatively undeveloped though it may be, Dominica’s breathtaking beauty has earned it the epithet ‘Garden of Eden’.

Today, most of the major players in the cruise holiday business offer Southern Caribbean cruises. Liners run by Royal Caribbean, Princess and Carnival will have numerous spectacular attractions on board, but the smaller companies (like Oceania, Star Clippers and Regent Seven Seas) take in the major ports of call of their bigger relations but add some truly mesmerising alternatives. You may never have heard of them, but ports of call at Tobago Cays, Mayreau Island, St Vincent and Bequia will show you the quiet, gorgeous charm of the ‘real’ Caribbean.